By Tom Robotham
Over the years, I’ve written a lot about my love of music and the cultivation of that love, from the first piano lessons that my mother gave me at the age of 5 to my foray into the New York City jazz scene after college.
Something few people know about me, however, is that I also love dance—ballet and modern—almost as much as I love music. And I remember the moment when that passion took hold.
It was a Sunday morning in 1973, when I was 17, and I was sitting on the living room floor, flipping through The New York Times Arts & Leisure section as my dad sat in his favorite chair, reading the news. Suddenly, I was struck by a black-and-white ad for the New York City Ballet—two dancers, one male, one female—frozen in a moment of graceful engagement. I was smitten.
“Dad,” I asked, “do you know much about ballet?”
“Not much,” he said. “I never took an interest in it.”
I was momentarily taken aback. My father was broadly educated, and I still had the impression at that age that he knew everything there was to know about all things cultural. Nevertheless, I remained fixated on the image. Part of the draw, I’ll admit, was erotic. The woman was stunningly beautiful. But so was the man—the one triggering desire, the other envy. I wanted her and I wanted my own body to be as lithe and as muscular as his.
I decided I had to go check out the ballet in person—and one Sunday morning, instead of lounging at home or going to church, I made the long trek to the Staten Island Ferry, then hopped on the 1 train to Lincoln Center, walked up to the New York State Theater and purchased a ticket for the matinee. Before the performance even started, I was captivated by the elegance of the lobby and crowds of attractive, well-dressed people milling about. Since early childhood, Manhattan had seemed like a kind of Emerald City to me, and at that moment I felt that I had truly arrived in the Land of Oz—all the more so when the heavy, rich-red curtain rose and the dancing commenced.
I don’t remember what was on the program that day, but it was enough to hook me for life. Over the next decade, I went as often as possible to Lincoln Center and other venues, and I enjoyed an abundance of programs featuring some of the best dancers and choreographers in the world: Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and many others.
By my junior year in college, I was so interested that I signed up for a modern-dance class taught by a woman with whom I’d already studied acting. In our little company, there was one other guy and four women, and we ended up doing an end-of-semester performance. That year, my teacher also brought a number of companies to our college for concerts and workshops. As a result, I got to take classes with the legendary Erick Hawkins, among others.
Thanks to that experience, I retained my interest in dance after college. Back in the city, I enrolled at the Martha Graham School. By then, her company—and her technique—had become my favorite. She was already in her 80s by then and certainly wasn’t teaching beginners’ classes, but she was still very active, and I felt honored by her mere presence, especially one day while I was waiting for class and she walked by with Liza Minelli.
As students, we also got free tickets to her shows, and one at the Metropolitan Opera House stands out. The performances of classic Graham works like Errand into the Maze were riveting, but just as exhilarating was Graham’s curtain call, in a gold Halston gown. I honestly don’t believe I’ve ever heard a more sustained and enthusiastic standing ovation.
By that point, I found the dance world so compelling that I began to seriously think about pursuing the art form professionally. That notion didn’t last long, though. For one thing, at 22, I thought I was already too old. Moreover, I quickly realized that I just didn’t have the talent. But that didn’t diminish my interest in taking classes for the sheer joy of it.
In college, that interest had elicited some derision. I remember one moment in particular when I was changing into my tights and leotard in the locker room and a jock started snickering, then said to his buddy, “Look at the fairy.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “I like to spend time with women in tights while you like to spend time snapping wet towels off of each other’s asses. And I’m the one who’s gay?”
It wasn’t the most prudent decision. He could easily have slammed my head into a locker, or worse. But for some reason he didn’t. Still, it raised my awareness of how we’re judged by the activities we choose. I’m sure others, though less hostile, thought that I must be gay if I had an interest in dance. It never bothered me, though. It probably would have in high school, but by that point I was determined to pursue my passions, regardless of what anyone thought.
My love of the art form deepened further in 1985 when I met a former dancer. We married a year later, and during our time in Manhattan we had a subscription to the New York City Ballet and saw some great performances in other venues as well, including the wonderful Joyce Theater.
When we decided to move to Norfolk, I was sorry to leave all that behind. I thought I was trading in a life of arts and culture for a quiet suburban family life. And for a while, it seemed like I had. In due time, though, I met Rob Cross, founding director of the then-new Virginia Arts Festival. I’d already known him to be the principal percussionist of the Virginia Symphony, but when we met one day to talk about his festival plans, he told me that dance was his “second love.”
Over the years, he’s expressed that love by bringing world-class companies to Norfolk: Graham’s, Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem, Mark Morris, Pilobolus, and many others. I’m eternally grateful to him for doing so. Sure, I could go north to Kennedy Center or Lincoln Center a few times a year to get my doses of dance. But the older I get, the less I like traveling. Rob has brought it within easy access—which is no small gift. For whenever I see a world-class dance performance, I feel young again—intimately connected to that 17-year-old who was captivated by that ad in the Times.
Last year, in fact—50 years after that aforementioned moment—I was seized by a desire to take dance classes again. I’m out of shape, and I knew I might look foolish, but so be it. The joy of movement is its own reward. I went to the Todd Rosenlieb Dance website to check out their schedule and was shocked and saddened to learn that the school had closed.
Oh well, I thought. Perhaps someday I’ll find some other studio where I can keep my body in touch with those fundamentals. There’s something deeply satisfying about doing the simplest of moves—standing at a barre doing plies, for example—just as I still find pleasure in playing a C-major scale on the piano, as fluidly as I can.
As I pondered the attraction recently, I turned to a collection of writings by the longtime New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce, whose pieces I read religiously when she was still active. “Dance,” she writes in her essay ‘Writing in the Dark,’ “speaks directly to the prenatal instinct for movement and for rhythm, the thing that makes sense of movement.”
Like instrumental music, dance is a form of communication that transcends words—a sublimely primal expression of the human condition. Depending on the choreography, the expression can be tragic, comic, sensual, mysterious or surreal. But whatever the case may be, when performed by great dancers who have stretched the possibilities of the human body in motion to their outer limits, it is great art.
With that in mind, I hope to see many more performances of classical ballet and modern dance in the near future. But even if I never got to do so again, I’d have my endlessly rich memories to sustain me. I certainly know one thing: Taking that leap (no pun intended) to go by myself to the New York City Ballet was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
